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So Providence for us, high, infinite,
Makes our necessities its watchful task,
Hearkens to all our prayers, helps all our
wants,

And even if it denies what seems our right, Either denies because 'twould have us ask, Or seems but to deny, or in denying grants.' 122. The Empyrean, within which he Primum Mobile revolves "with so great desire that its velocity is almost ncomprehensible."

141. Convito, III. 2: "The human soul, ennobled by the highest power, that is by reason, partakes of the divine nature in the manner of an eternal Intelligence; because the soul is so ennobled by that sovereign power, and denuded of matter, that the divine light shines in it as in an angel; and therefore man has been called by the philosophers a divine animal."

CANTO II.

1. The Heaven of the Moon, in which are seen the spirits of those who, having taken monastic vows, were forced to violate them.

Life and Times of Dante, IL Ch. 15,
Mrs. Bunbury's Tr., says :-

"The last part of the Commedia, which Dante finished about this time difficult and obscure part of the whole . . is said to be the most (1320). poem. And it is so; and it would be in vain for us to attempt to awaken in the generality of readers that attention which Dante has not been able to obtain for himself. Readers in general will always be repulsed by the difficulties of its numerous allegories, by the series of heavens, arranged according to the now forgotten Ptolemaic system,. and more than all by disquisitions on philosophy and theology which often degenerate into mere scholastic themes. With the exception of the three cantos relating to Cacciaguida, and a few other episodes which recall us to earth, as well as those verses in which frequently Dante's love for Beatrice shines forth, the Paradiso must not be considered as pleasant reading for the general reader, but as an especial recreation for those who find there, expressed in sublime verse, those contemplations that have been the subIn Dante's symbolism this heaven re-jects of their philosophical and theological presents the first science of the Trivium. Convito, II. 14: "I say that the heaven of the Moon resembles Grammar; because it may be compared therewith; for if the Moon be well observed, two things are seen peculiar to it, which are not seen in the other stars. One is the shadow in it, which is nothing but the rarity of its body, in which the rays of the sun cannot terminate and be reflected as in the other parts. The other is the variation of its brightness, which now shines on one side, and now upon the other, according as the sun looks upon it. And Grammar has these two properties; since, on account of its infinity, the rays of reason do not terminate in it in any special part of its words; and it shines now on this side, and now on that, inasmuch as certain words, certain declinations, certain constructions, are in use which once were not, and many once were which will be again."

For the influences of the Moon, see Canto III. Note 30.

The introduction to this canto is at once a warning and an invitation. Balbi,

studies.

But few will always be the students of philosophy and theology, and much fewer those who look upon these sciences as almost one and the same thing, pursued by two different methods; these, if I am not mistaken, will find in Dante's Paradiso, a treasure of thought, and the loftiest and most soothing words of comfort, forerunners of the joys of Heaven itself. Above all, the Paradiso will delight those who find themselves, when they are reading it, in a somewhat similar disposition of mind to that of Dante when he was writing it; those in short who, after having in their youth lived in the world, and sought happiness in it, have now arrived at maturity, old age, or satiety, and seek by the means of philosophy and theology to know as far as possible of that other world on which their hopes now rest. Philosophy is the romance of the aged, and Religion tha only future history for us all. Both these subjects of contemplation we find in Dante's Paradiso, and pursued with a rare modesty, not beyond the limits of our understanding, and with due sub

mission to the Divine Law which placed these limits."

59. The spots in the Moon, which Dante thought were caused by rarity a density of the substance of the planet Convito, II. 14: "The shadow in it, which is nothing but the rarity of its body,

8. In the other parts of the poem "one summit of Parnassus" has sufficed; but | In this Minerva, Apollo, and the nine Muses come to his aid, as wind, helms-in which the rays of the sun cannot ter man, and compass. minate and be reflected, as in the other parts.

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II. The bread of the Angels is Knowledge or Science, which Dante calls the "ultimate perfection.' Convito, I. 1:— 'Everything, impelled by the providence of its own nature, inclines towards its own perfection; whence, inasmuch as knowledge is the ultimate perfection of our soul, wherein consists our ultimate felicity, we are all naturally subject to its

desire. O blessed those few who sit at the table where the bread of the Angels is eaten."

16. The Argonauts, when they saw their leader Jason ploughing with the wild bulls of Aetes, and sowing the land with serpents' teeth. Ovid, Met., VII.,

Tate's Tr. :

"To unknown yokes their brawny necks they yield,

And, like tame oxen, plough the wondering field.

The Colchians stare; the Grecians shout, and

raise

Their champion's courage with inspiring praise.

Emboldened now, on fresh attempts he goes, With serpents' teeth the fertile furrows sows; The glebe, fermenting with enchanted juice, Makes the snakes' teeth a human crop produce."

19. This is generally interpreted as referring to the natural aspiration of the soul for higher things; characterized in Purg. XXI. 1, as

"The natural thirst that ne'er is satisfied,

Excepting with the water for whose grace
The woman of Samaria besought."

But Venturi says that it means the "being borne onward by the motion of the Primum Mobile, and swept round so as to find himself directly beneath the moon.'

23. As if looking back upon his journey through the air, Dante thus rapidly describes it in an inverse order, the arrival, the ascent, the departure ;-the striking of the shaft, the flight, the discharge from the bow-string. Here again we are reminded of the arrow of Pandarus, Iliad, IV. 120.

51. Cain with his bush of thorns. See Inf. XX. Note 126.

Milton, Par. Lost, V. 419 :—

"Whence in her visage round those spots a purged,

Vapours not yet into her substance turned." 64. The Heaven of the Fixed Stars. 73. Either the diaphanous parts mest run through the body of the Moon, a the rarity and density must be in layers

one above the other.

90. As in a mirror, which Dante ele where, Inf. XXIII. 25, calls impiombate vetro, leaded glass.

lies under it; "the mountain that remains 107. The subject of the snow is wha! naked," says Buti. Others give a scholastic interpretation to the word, defining it "the cause of accident," the cause of colour and cold.

III. Shall tremble like a star. "When a man looks at the stars," says Buti, "he because their splendour scintillates as fire sees their effulgence tremble, and this is does, and moves to and fro like the flame of the fire." The brighter they burn, the more they tremble.

112. The Primum Mobile, revolving in the Empyrean, and giving motion to all the heavens beneath it.

115. The Heaven of the Fixed Stars. Greek Epigrams, III. 62 :

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"If I were heaven, With all the eyes of heaven would I look down on thee.

Also Catullus, Carm., V. :—

"How many stars, when night is silent,
Look on the furtive loves of men.'

And Milton, Par. Lost, V. 44:

"Heaven wakes with all his eyes Whom to behold but thee, nature's desire ?" 131. The Intelligences, ruling and guiding the several heavens (receiving power from above, and distributing it downward, taking their impression from God and stamping it like a seal upon the spheres below), according to Dionysius the Areopagite are as follows :

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CANTO III.

41. Your destiny; that is, of yourself and the others with you.

49. Piccarda was a sister of Forese and Corso Donati, and of Gemma, Dante's wife. In Purg. XXIV. 13, Forese says of her :

My sister, who, 'twixt beautiful and good,

I know not which was more, triumphs rejoicing

Already in her crown on high Olympus."

She was a nun of Santa Clara, and was dragged by violence from the cloister by her brother Corso Donati, who married her to Rosselin della Tosa. As she herself says:

"God knows what afterward my life became."

It was such that she did not live long. For this crime the "excellent Baron," according to the Ottimo, had to do penance in his shirt.

70. Milton, Par. Lost, XII. 583 :—

"Add Love,
By name to come called Charity, the soul
Of all the rest."

118. Constance, daughter of Roger of Sicily. She was a nun at Palermo, but

Of

of the house of Suabia, Barbarossa was the first, Henry V. the second, and Frederic II. the third, and, as Dante calls him in the Convito, IV. 3, "the last of the Roman Emperors," meaning the last of the Suabian line.

1. The Heaven of the Moon continued. Of the influence of this planet, Buti, quoting the astrologer Albumasar, says: "The Moon is cold, moist, and phlegmatic, sometimes warm, and gives lightness, aptitude in all things, desire of joy, of beauty, and of praise, beginning of all works, knowledge of the rich and noble, prosperity in life, acquisition of things was taken from the convent and married desired, devotion in faith, superior to the Emperor Henry V., son of Barbasciences, multitude of thoughts, necrorossa and father of Frederic II. mancy, acuteness of mind in things, geo-these "winds of Suabia," or Emperors metry, knowledge of lands and waters and of their measure and number, weakness of the sentiments, noble women, marriages, pregnancies, nursings, emthe bassies, falsehoods, accusations ; being lord among lords, servant among servants, and conformity with every man of like nature, oblivion thereof, timid, of simple heart, flattering, honourable towards men, useful to them, not betraying secrets, a multitude of infirmities and the care of healing bodies, cutting hair, liberality of food, chastity. These are the significations (influences) of the Moon upon the things it finds, the blame and honour of which, according to the astrologers, belong to the planet; but the wise man follows the good influences, and leaves the bad; though all are good and necessary to the life of the universe."

18. Narcissus mistook his shadow for a substance; Dante, falling into the opposite error, mistakes these substances for shadows.

CANTO IV.

1. The Heaven of the Moon continued.

2. Montaigne says: "If any one should place us between the bottle and the bacon (entre la bouteille et le jambon), with an equal appetite for food and drink, there would doubtless be no remedy but to die of thirst and hunger."

6. Ovid, Met., V., Maynwaring's Tr.:

"As when a hungry tiger near him hears
Two lowing herds, awhile he both forbears;
Nor can his hopes of this or that renounce,
So strong he lusts to prey on both at once."

9. "A similitude," says Venturi, "of great poetic beauty, but of little philosophic soundness.

13. When he recalled and interpreted the forgotten dream of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, ii. 10: "The Chaldeans answered before the king, and said, There is not a man upon the earth that can show the king's matter: therefore there is no king, lord, nor ruler, that asked such things at any magician, or astrologer, or Chaldean. And it is a rare thing that the king requireth: and there is none other that can show it before the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh."

each.

24. Plato, Timæus, Davis's Tr., says: "And after having thus framed the universe, he allotted to it souls equal in number to the stars, inserting each in . . . And he declared also, that after living well for the time appointed to him, each one should once more return to the habitation of his associate star, and spend a blessed and suitable existence."

26. The word "thrust," pontano, is here used in its architectural sense, as in Inf. XXXII. 3. There it is literal, here figurative.

28. Che più s' india, that most in-God's himself. As in Canto IX. 81, S' io m' intuassi come tu t' immii, "if I could inthee myself as thou dost in-me thyself"; and other expressions of a similar kind.

42. The dogma of the Peripatetics, that nothing is in Intellect which was not first in Sense.

48. Raphael, "the affable archangel," of whom Milton says, Par. Lost, V.

220:

"Raphael, the sociable spirit, that deigned To travel with Tobias, and secured His marriage with the seven-times-wedded maid."

See Tobit xii. 14: "And now God hath sent me to heal thee and Sara thy daughter-in-law. I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One."

It must be remarked, however, that it was Tobit, and not Tobias, who was cured of his blindness,

49. Plato's Dialogue, entitled Timeus, the name of the philosopher of Locri. 51. Plato means it literally, and the Scriptures figuratively.

54. When it was infused into the body, or the body became informed with it. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., L, Quæst. LXXVI. I, says: "Form is that by which a thing is. This prin ciple therefore, by which we first think, whether it be called intellect, or intellec tual soul, is the form of the body."

And Spenser, Hymne in Honour of Beautie, says :

"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take, For soule is forme and doth the bodie make.”

63. Joachim di Flora, Dante's "Calabrian Abbot Joachim," the mystic of the twelfth century, says in his Exposi tion of the Apocalypse: "The deceived Gentiles believed that the planets to which they gave the names of Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Mars, the Moon, and the Sun, were gods."

64. Stated in line 20:

"The violence of others, for what reason

Doth it decrease the measure of my merit?"

83. St. Lawrence. In Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, II. 156, his martyrdom is thus described :

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:

The satellites of the tyrant, hearing that the treasures of the church had been confided to Lawrence, carried him before the tribunal, and he was questioned, but replied not one word; therefore he was put into a dungeon, under the charge of a man named Hippolytus, whom with his whole family he converted to the faith of Christ, and baptized; and when he was called again before the Prefect and required to say where the treasures were concealed, he answered that in three days he would show them. third day being come, St. Lawrence gathered together the sick and the poor, to whom he had dispensed alms, and, placing them before the Prefect, said,

The

Behold, here are the treasures of Christ's Church.' Upon this the Prefect, thinking he was mocked, fell into a great rage, and ordered St. Lawrence to be tortured till he had made known where the treasures were concealed; but no suffering could subdue the patience and constancy

of the holy martyr. Then the Prefect commanded that he should be carried by night to the baths of Olympias, near the villa of Sallust the historian, and that a new kind of torture should be prepared for him, more strange and cruel than had ever entered into the heart of a tyrant to conceive; for he ordered him to be stretched on a sort of bed, formed of iron bars in the manner of a gridiron, and a fire to be lighted beneath, which should gradually consume his body to ashes: and the executioners did as they were commanded, kindling the fire and adding coals from time to time, so that the victim was in a manner roasted alive; and those who were present looked on with horror, and wondered at the cruelty of the Prefect, who could condemn to such torments a youth of such fair person and courteous and gentle bearing, and all for the lust of gold."

84 Plutarch thus relates the story of Mutius Scævola, Dryden's Tr. :

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to the enterprise, was not sorry that he had miscarried in it, because so brave and good a man deserved rather to be a friend to the Romans than an enemy."

103. Alcmæon, who slew his mother Eriphyle to avenge his father Amphia. raus the soothsayer. See Purg. XII. Note 50.

Ovid, Met., IX. :

"The son shall bathe his hands in parent's blood

And in one act be both unjust and good."

118. Beatrice, beloved of God; "that blessed Beatrice, who lives in heaven with the angels and on earth with my soul."

131. Lessing, Theol. Schrift., I. 108: "If God held all Truth shut up in his right hand, and in his left only the ever restless instinct for Truth, and said to me, Choose! I should humbly fall down at his left, and say, Father, give! Pure Truth is for Thee alone!"

"The story of Mutius is variously 139. It must not be forgotten, that given; we, like others, must follow the Beatrice is the symbol of Divine Wisdom. commonly received statement. He was Dante says, Convito, III. 15: "In her a man endowed with every virtue, but countenance appear things which display most eminent in war; and resolving to some of the pleasures of Paradise;" and kill Porsenna, attired himself in the Tus-notes particularly "the eyes and smile." can habit, and using the Tuscan language, came to the camp, and approaching the seat where the king sat amongst his nobles, but not certainly knowing the xing, and fearful to inquire, drew out his sword, and stabbed one who he thought had most the appearance of king. Mutius was taken in the act, and whilst he was under examination, a pan of fire was brought to the king, who intended to sacrifice; Mutius thrust his right hand into the flame, and whilst it burnt stood looking at Porsenna with a steadfast and undaunted countenance; Porsenna at last in admiration dismissed him, and returned his sword, reaching it from his seat; Mutius received it in his left hand, which occasioned the name of Scævola, lefthanded, and said, 'I have overcome the terrors of Porsenna, yet am vanquished by his generosity, and gratitude obliges me to disclose what no punishment could extort ;' and assured him then, that three hundred Romans, all of the same resolution, lurked about his camp only waiting for an opportunity; he, by lot appointed

He then adds: "And here it should be known that the eyes of Wisdom are its demonstrations, by which the truth is most clearly seen; and its smile the persuasions, in which is displayed the in terior light of Wisdom under a veil ; and in these two things is felt the exceeding pleasure of beatitude, which is the chief good in Paradise. This pleasure cannot exist in anything here below, except in. beholding these eyes and this smile."

CANTO V.

1. The Heaven of Mercury, where are seen the spirits of those who for the love of fame achieved great deeds. Of its symbolism Dante says, Convito, II. 14: "The Heaven of Mercury may be compared to Dialectics, on account of two properties; for Mercury is the smallest star of heaven, since the quantity of its diameter is not more than two thousand and thirty-two miles, according to the estimate of Alfergano, who declares it to

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